


A Second Chance

by phoenike



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Drinking, F/M, Renegade Shepard (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-21 01:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11347272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenike/pseuds/phoenike
Summary: Shepard can't flirt.





	A Second Chance

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little something I found while going through old Mass Effect stuff in my Google Drive. I later scavenged several lines from this for [Fragile](https://archiveofourown.org/works/893681). Same slightly broken renegade Shepard, same unfortunate inability to flirt successfully with her trusty turian companion :-) The ending is kind of sudden, but if you want to know what happens, you can just go on to read the main fic, I guess.
> 
> Hasn't been beta read, sorry if something's not right.

Shepard stared at the bottle on the counter. She’d really blown it this time, hadn’t she?

Commander Shepard, the bane of Reapers and head-butter of krogans, had pyjaked out of a bit of cross-species flirting.

Damned eidetic memory. Every word was etched in her mind.

_I had reach, but she had flexibility. More than one way to work off stress, I guess._

The tone of his voice, the look on his face… she wanted him to feel the same way about her. But as far as she knew, Garrus Vakarian didn’t even realize that his commanding officer was a woman.

She groaned and grabbed the bottle, and filled a thick-bottomed glass. Damn them all. This wasn’t an Alliance ship with Alliance regulations. It was twelve hours until they arrived on Horizon, all her duties were taken care of, she had state-of-the-art shit inside her that prevented her from being compromised by anything as plebeian as a hangover and by god, she’d marinate herself in vodka if she so wanted.

She tossed back the shot and coughed.

It was so easy to imagine how it would have, should have happened.

 _‘It seems like you’re carrying some tension. Maybe I could help you_ _get_ _rid of it?’_

_‘I, uh, didn’t think you’d feel like sparring, Commander.’_

She tilted the bottle again and chased the shot with another, feeling hardly anything beyond the warmth down her throat. Cursed Cerberus… she didn’t mind the hangover thing, but fuck, she was almost unable to get properly drunk any more.

_‘What if we skipped right to the tiebreaker? We could test your reach… and my flexibility.’_

_‘Huh. Never knew you had a weakness for men with scars.’_

He would have joked about it, for sure, but the fact was she didn’t have a weakness for scars. She had a weakness for turians. Their predatory physique, their menacing demeanor… it stirred something in her, something she didn’t want to think too closely about. She’d known better than to advertise her perversions in the Alliance, but Cerberus didn’t care.

If only she hadn’t been such a damned coward.

There had been words ringing in her ears when they talked, too.

_‘Uh, sorry but... I don’t think I could ever think about a human that way.’_

_‘You’re my best friend, Shepard. I don’t want to mess that up.’_

_‘I respect you, Commander, but…’_

Garrus didn’t have a fetish for humans, and Shepard couldn’t shed her soft skin, no more than she could shed Akuze or the Reds or that snowball planet in the Amada System where she’d died. She’d lose her right-hand man, the only one she could trust to keep her sane. He’d still snipe husks off her back, but he’d never look at her the same.

She started drinking straight from the bottle.

o o o

Strong arms pulled her off the floor and heaved her over a broad shoulder. Seemed like she’d managed to get drunk, after all.

“Thank you, Officer Vakarian,” EDI said.

“Anytime.” His voice rumbled through Shepard like a small earthquake.

The anti-toxin implant was already well on its way to doing its job, but for now, it felt easier just to let things happen. Her head pounded like mad, and her thoughts only started to clear a little when they were already in and out of the elevator and in her loft, dimly lit by the great (and completely empty) aquarium.

His body was hard and powerful and its heat radiated through his clothes like the warmth of a sun. She was starting to sweat, and then her world spun as he tossed her on the bed and leaned over her.

What had started like a very promising dream turned into reality when, instead of crushing her beneath his half-metal body, he just quickly and very professionally checked that she was breathing normally.

She grabbed him by the collar of his utes. There had been a time when she couldn’t have kept him from going — not with his advantage of weight and strength — but now, what with the improvements Cerberus had installed in her and his surprise, she could actually hold him for a bit.

“Heyyy, big guy,” she drawled. “Wanna calibrate something in my pants?”

His mandibles fluttered in bewilderment. “Commander?”

This was her second chance. She wasn’t going to waste it. She’d already practiced it in her mind, how hard could it be? “How ‘bout we spar and… “ No, that wasn’t how it went. “I’ve read Fornax so I know you got reach and...” Something about flexibility? “Hey, I can do splits you know..!”

Turians had no eyebrows to raise, but the way his facial carapace aligned itself around his eyes was a passable approximation.

Up close, he smelled of steel and spice. She wanted to drown in his heat, to be pushed through the goddamn floor by his weight. Jesus. Maybe she’d skip the words and go straight for action. Her left hand started sliding down his chest.

He grabbed her fingers in his own before they'd even reached his waist.

“Shepard, you’re drunk.”

“No, I’m —” _Crazy for you?_ She licked her lips. “Horny.”

“Uh huh.”

Despite her cybernetics, it didn’t take Garrus all that much effort to extract himself. “It’s ten hours until Horizon, Commander. Better sleep that off while you can.”

Shepard groaned an objection. But he was already walking, his springy hunter’s gait taking him away from her human space and its awkward human proportions. A moment later, the door swished open, and he was gone without a backward glance.

She closed her eyes and grimaced, and proceeded to hit the back of her head several times against the unsatisfying softness of her bed.

 _I’ve read Fornax..?_ Oh, god. She might as well have slapped him in the face with a used hardsuit body sock. Apparently she could talk a rogue spectre into putting a bullet through his own brain, but couldn’t formulate a coherent sentence when making a pass at her right-hand turian.

Of course there was always the possibility that he just didn’t find her sexually attractive. And a very likely one, at that. The thought felt almost physically painful. Any problem with an even distantly workable solution, however crazy, she could fix; that was the reason The Illusive Man had paid an army’s yearly budget to bring her back. But this... this was about hormones and instincts, guts, blood and balls, and that kind of magic was something she couldn’t manipulate.

By now, a headache was nearly all that remained of her intoxication. Bloody Cerberus. Didn’t even allow her a good old bender any more.

“EDI, why’d you send Garrus?” she asked into the dim depths of her quarters. A spherical silver-blue hologram lit in one corner.

“I had addressed you several times without a response, Commander,” the AI replied with only the delay required for her merely human attention to switch from processing her own output to decoding input. “It is one of my tasks to ensure optimal crew performance. Due to your emotional attachment to Officer Vakarian, sending him entailed the lowest probability of confrontation.”

 _Emotional attachment_ _. Riiight._ “You spend too much time talking to Joker. His humor’s starting to rub off on you.”

“I do not understand how my conversations with Flight-Lieutenant Moreau factor into the matter at hand. His verbal input does not alter my core programming.”

“The hell it doesn’t.”

Well, at least the AI knew better than to suggest sending up Chakwas, something she’d had a habit of doing in the beginning. Shepard liked the doctor well enough, but she couldn’t tolerate the idea of being seen by anyone right now, least of all anyone compassionate. A good ribbing was what she deserved. Better yet, a sturdy kick in the gonads.

But she was Commander Shepard. Finding someone bold enough to try and kick her was unfortunately rather difficult.  
 

**Author's Note:**

> Since the comments I've gotten so far have all been asking whether I'm going to continue this: like I tried to say in the beginning, the main fic for this Shep was written several years ago and can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/893681) :-)


End file.
